FEATURES

On Wednesday morning, January 30, we got up incredibly early in the morning, boarded busses while still completely dark outside, and by the time we woke up in the morning we were already at Kibbutz Yotvata, just outside of Eilat! After breakfast and Shacharit we climbed Har Tzfachot. The view of the Gulf of Eilat from the top was absolutely breathtaking! In the afternoon, we took a boat ride and got to participate in some incredible water sports. After a delicious BBQ dinner cooked by our own building manager Nati Stark, we had a free night to enjoy Eilat's tourist area.

The next day we hiked in Ein Ketura. It was an incredible hike, made particularly interesting by the fact that we experienced a quite unusual heavy rain and hail storm in the middle of the desert! Since it was raining, Mrs. Katz changed our afternoon activity and we had a choice of bowling or ice skating. We drove at night to Yerucham, and on Friday we hiked in the Machtesh Hagadol (also beautiful views!), and went camel riding! As Sarit descovered, camels sure are funny animals!

We spent Shabbat in Yerucham, heard a shiur from Rabbi Haber about whether the Negev and Eilat are part of halachic Eretz Yisrael, and took a walking tour where we learned about the history of development towns, the social problems there and the very inspiring movement to help rehabilitate these towns. We also got to daven at the local Hesder Yeshiva, which is a very important part of this movement.